‘United States of Insanity’: Michael Moore to make Broadway debut with Trump show

The Terms of My Surrender will look at the rise of US President Donald Trump and the resistance to him. Michael Moore had accurately predicted in 2016 that industrial Midwestern states would swing the election in Trump’s favour.

Michael Moore will make his theatrical debut in a one-man show on US President Donald Trump.(AFP Photo/Daniel Leal-Olivas)

Film provocateur Michael Moore will make his theatrical debut in a one-man show that explores the rise of US President Donald Trump and the resistance to him, producers announced on Monday.

The Terms of My Surrender, which will open in previews on July 28 at the Belasco Theatre on Broadway, was described as “an exhilarating, subversive one-man show guaranteed to take audiences on a ride through the United States of Insanity.”

The show will explain how Trump emerged and “where best to dine before crossing over the mountains with the Von Trapp family into Canada,” the Belasco Theatre said in a statement, in an allusion to flight from Nazi-ruled Austria in The Sound of Music.

“To unseat a president, it will take an act of Broadway,” it said.

Moore, who had his start as a print journalist, has combined staunch left-wing activism with humorous personal asides in films such as Bowling for Columbine, which tackles US gun culture, and Fahrenheit 9/11 that took aim at former president George W. Bush’s “war on terror.”

Known for his slovenly look and ever-present baseball cap, Moore lives in his home state of Michigan. He accurately predicted last year that such industrial Midwestern states would swing the election to Trump at a time when most pundits thought the billionaire mogul stood no chance against Hillary Clinton.

The Terms of My Surrender will be directed by Michael Mayer, who collaborated with punk rockers Green Day on their politically charged musical American Idiot and won a Tony Award for Duncan Sheik’s rock musical Spring Awakening.

Michael Moore at the protests in November 2016 in the Union Square Park against the election of Republican President-elect Donald Trump.
(Shutterstock)

“I think what the world needs right now is Michael Moore standing on a Broadway stage sharing his hilarious stories and incendiary political perspective, creating the kind of dialogue that can only happen in the theatre,” Mayer said in a statement.

Nonetheless, Broadway can be unforgiving to famous names who try to make it. Pop star Sting and TV host Rosie O’Donnell are among celebrities whose live productions have struggled in recent years.